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The Future of Social Media is...

Silicon Alley Insider's Business Insider is my favorite way to stay up on the business of the Web... there, I said it. The one thing I actually do daily is check their always good, "10 Things in Tech You Need To Know"

In honor of SAI, I got permission to reprint an informative and sometimes funny set of quotes from the Digirati about the future of Social Media...

Dennis Crowley, co-founder and CEO of Foursquare

Image: foursquare

"The
future of social media... is that the social graph becomes
so ubiquitous in everything we do that we stop using the term 'social
media'. Just about everything is more interesting when you start to
realize how your friends are connected to it: who's been here, who's
going where, who's experienced what, who's watching / listening to /
reading what. Early adopters are already taking advantage of this. For
example, I open foursquare after work to see where my friends are going
for drinks, or I open it at restaurants to see what my friends say to
order. Foursquare's new Radar feature buzzes your phone as you walk
around to call attention to things your friends find interesting. This
will happen with TV ('10 of your friends are watching right now!'), and
it's already happening to music with things like Spotify and Facebook.
Foursquare is hustling to make it happen with all the places you
encounter in the real world."Follow @dens on Twitter

Sara Haines, Contributing Correspondent for "TODAY"

Image: NBC

"The
future of social media is... an integral part of television. Just as
people have connected and talked about TV shows like TODAY for 60 years,
viewers will continue to use new technology to share and react to what
they're watching. From real time alerts as news is breaking to
immediate feedback from our viewing audience, social media has provided a
platform where people around the world can contribute directly to the
content of TODAY by submitting ideas and, in turn, we can gauge the
reaction to the stories we are covering.‬"Follow @sarahaines on Twitter

Mark Cuban, Chairman of HDNet and owner of the Dallas Mavericks

"The
future of Social Media is multi-dimensional. Each 'face' will
correspond with an public/interest/career/personal area of your life and
we will share or intersect that 'face' with others. Some will be
automated with rules we define. Others will be manual. Some will be
fully automated (when I drive past Joe's house make sure to leave him a
hello message on his digital video inbox...You know normal stuff like
that."Follow @mcuban on Twitter

"The
future of social media is lying. As more and more services close their
grip upon who we know, where we are, and what we're doing, we'll come to
the sobering realization that we're just not that interesting. We'll
create personas to travel the world, meet interesting people, solve
crimes and rescue kittens from burning houses. 'Who you are' has never
been as interesting as 'who you pretend to be'. The future of social
media is the frontier of a new fiction, and one that we can be an
active, and sometimes unwilling participant in. We don't want real
identities, we want really good identities."Follow @Mike_FTW on Twitter

Jeffrey Zeldman, Designer, Writer, and Publisher

Image: Tony Quartarolo

"The future of social media is ... UBIQUITOUS. It will be baked into everything we use, from desktop
software, to mobile and the web, to the thermostat and phone in our
hotel room. MONOLITHIC. While the web and its low barrier to entry will continue
to enable the creation of small, diverse communities, and while small
teams will continue to create wonderful social niche products,
eventually (and fairly soon) two or three services/brands will come out
on top and will be the channels through which 90% of social commerce
takes place. We can all guess which three services these will be—the
pieces are already in motion—but it's still early enough that we might
be surprised.SMARTER. It is becoming more seamlessly integrated into traditionally
"private" activities such as banking and shopping, but it is still new
enough, poorly integrated enough, and riddled with sufficient usability
problems to currently be a niche or vanguard activity (i.e. done by web
and social media geeks, not the public at large). That will change. It
will change faster if leading stores, banks, and so on work with real
design and UX teams to integrate social experiences in ways that enhance
the overall shopping/banking experience.INVISIBLE. The phrase "social media," already used only by a small
subsection of the public (tech journalists, consultants, investors,
unemployed designers) will fall into complete disuse as social media
becomes smarter, monolithic, and ubiquitous -- the background noise of
all our lives, as little noticed as the electrical hum in our homes."Follow @zeldman on Twitter

Gina Bianchini, founder, CEO of Mightybell, co-founder of Ning

"The
future of social media is…moving from passively sitting back and
watching what other people are doing to actively becoming more engaged,
active, and interesting through new social applications that encourage
people to think bigger then learn and act together."Follow @ginab on Twitter

Chad Hurley, CEO of Delicious, co-founder of YouTube

Image: Delicious

"Social
media will be the main engine of discovery, giving us the ability to
find the signal within the noise. As people's networks and interactions
expand, massive data sets will generate predictive models that will know
what you want before you look for it."Follow @Chad_Hurley on Twitter

Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine

"The
future of social media is…using algorithms and intelligence to
simultaneously shield us from the 99% of information we don't need to
know and expose us to the 1% we not only want to know but need to know.
Post-modern news reading is going to be all about consuming less. Once
the technology gets good enough, everyone will feel like they have their
own set of presidential advisors filling them in and letting them get
on with their lives."Follow @mikeindustries on Twitter

Dae Mellencamp, CEO of Vimeo

Image: Vimeo

"The
future of social media is the loss of the distinction between media and
social interaction online. Mass media and social media will be
seamlessly integrated across devices and platforms to offer relevant,
dynamic, personalized experiences for people anywhere. Discoverability
and the import of editorial curation will not be lost, but rather
inherently incorporated into the environments for richer and more
customized experiences."Follow @dmellencamp on Twitter

Sam Altman, Co-founder and CEO of Loopt

"Mobile
phones are becoming extensions of ourselves. They know more about us
than almost anything else--the apps we use, messages we send, things we
search for, and people we talk to say a huge amount about who we are.
The future of mobile is about how well your phone knows you and knows
what you need before you do."Follow @sama on Twitter

"The
future of social media is ... rooted in the past! We've always been
social, and after a century of turning our eyes to the heavy industry of
media, we are learning again how to turn to one another. Conditions
have changed, of course. Social media offer us malleable identities,
global reach, instantaneous impact. We are beginning to see new forms of
aggregate behavior. Understanding comes next, and with it, an
appreciation that this newly enabled collectivity has implication and
edge. The future of social media is, in a profound way, civic."

Mike Lazerow, Founder, Chairman and CEO at Buddy Media

Image: Buddy Media

"The
future of social media is the core of a massive shift online from a
search and intent-based world to a social, people-based world. The last
three years were about the consumer side of social platforms, as we
watched Facebook, Zynga and Twitter grow exponentially. The next three
years will about the enterprise side of social, and how companies engage
and grow their businesses by tapping into these massive platforms.It’s an era where customers, vendors and partners are no longer
anonymous segments that you 'source,' 'manage' and 'market to.' They are
people. People you connect with. Talk to. Advocate for. Listen to. And
if you’re lucky, they sell for you, solve problems for you, defend you,
listen to you and build your business for you, one conversation at a
time, while you sleep."Follow @lazerow on Twitter

Charlene Li, Partner, Founder of Altimeter Group

"The future of social media is......going
to be like air. It will be anywhere and everywhere you need and want it
to be. It will be seamlessly built into our everyday experiences,
rather than shoe horned into the corners of websites. And like air, if
it isn't around, you will feel like you can't truly breath and live."Follow @charleneli on Twitter

Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite

Image: HootSuite

"The
future of social media is the future of global communication. As the
most prolific communication medium of all time, social media is as
naturally disruptive as it is a bridge for international organizations.
We've seen social networks explode as people and businesses around the
world find a voice that resonates throughout the Globe. Expect the
future of social media to disrupt traditional media methods, and help
both commerce and culture flourish. This all from the tips of your
fingers, or a tool that fits in the palm of your hand."Follow @invoker on Twitter

"The
future of social media is real. People tend to view online
communication as virtual, but social media is becoming more and more
real in our social life. With the development of new technology and
mobile devices, the boundaries between virtual and real communication
will become meaningless, especially for the new generation growing up in
the current environment. Success of social media will hinge on its
ability to offer social environments that are compatible with the way
our brain processes social information."Follow @kanair on Twitter

Pete Cashmore, Founder,CEO of Mashable

Image: Mashable

"The
future of social media is...mobile, local and about forming implicit
rather than explicit connections. Social networks need to understand
where I am, where my friends are, and how different connections become
relevant at different times. Social networking needs to be push rather
than pull."Follow @petecashmore on Twitter

Howard Lindzon, Startup Investor & Co-Founder of StockTwits

"The future of social media is already here. It's about sharing, curation, aggregation and finding new voices.Everyone wants to publish if they are given the right platform to create it. I do believe that sharing horizontally might have peaked and facebook
and Twitter seem to be the 800 pound gorilla's, but the vertical social
space is about to explode. That might not be as exciting for
valuations in start-up land but it will mean better business models and a
move on to other areas for swarming angel investors and venture
capitalists. That would be a good thing."Follow @howardlindzon on Twitter

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit

Image: Anirudh Koul

"The future of social media is one day not calling them 'social media.'When Steve and I launched Reddit in 2005, I don't recall that
phrase existing, we just wanted to build the most efficient system for
finding great content online. As competitors have come and gone, reddit
now stands alone in what was once the category 'social news' (pro-tip:
consider just putting social in front of whatever industry you want to
change) and I suspect this is a model for what's to come with the rest
of 'social media.'These media are just new ways of communicating, which humans have
been doing for quite some time. Eventually we'll be over the novelty of
'social' because it'll be the default."Follow @kn0thing on Twitter